


Next Time Around

by AbbyBanks



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Comment Fic, Forgetting, Gen, Past and Future Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-07
Updated: 2009-10-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 15:43:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16895421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbbyBanks/pseuds/AbbyBanks
Summary: The man sounds so wistful and for a moment Arthur wants desperately to remember him, to place him.





	Next Time Around

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Comment Fic on LJ/Dreamwidth to the prompts Opposites, Merlin/Arthur Modern!AU, On the other side of the street

Arthur isn’t one to notice people who aren’t in his immediate social circle. The latest temp from the secretarial agency is blonde and she's thorough and accurate when she takes dictation from him. Her name is... Jane? Joan? Something like that. Jean, perhaps. His Office Manager is Niamh and he’s known her since he was fifteen and she PA’d for his father. Until Morgana came and thrust a card under his nose earlier, ordering him to sign it, he had no idea that it was Niamh’s birthday this week. 

It had never occurred to him that she had a birthday at all. 

His circle consists of his father, his sister, his uncle and a couple of acquaintances – friends? No, acquaintances – from Cambridge who he keeps up with because they’re useful business contacts. He has nearly a thousand people who work under him and, as a group, their well being and happiness is paramount. 

As individuals, he couldn’t care less about them.

This makes it all the odder that he spends so much time each day looking out of his office window and watching the Big Issue seller across the street. He’s never spoken to him – never even bought a Big Issue from him, come to that – but he can’t help looking. There’s something about him that Arthur can’t put his finger on. Something familiar, something he thinks he should be able to recognise from way back, from when he was a child, perhaps. He tries to remember if the man reminds him of someone at prep school; perhaps one of his teachers.

No-one comes to mind.

Jane-Jean-Joan knocks on the open office door, and it strikes Arthur that there are other things he should be doing on a Monday morning than staring at the street.

 

By noon it’s gone so dark outside that even in his airy corner office the lights come flickering on. The first spots hit his window as he turns in his chair to look. By the time he reaches the window the heavens have opened and the wind is blowing furiously. He looks down at the swarms of people, their umbrellas blown inside out, their folders and newspapers held futilely over their heads, fleeing before the rain like a defeated army. 

He wonders briefly how he would know what a defeated army would look like.

The Big Issue guy is huddled in a wholly inadequate doorway, hair plastered to his head. Arthur wonders why he doesn’t go somewhere drier. There’s a bus shelter round the corner, he’d have a better chance of staying dry there. Presumably he can’t afford to go into the Costa whose doorway he has appropriated.

Arthur is on the move before he thinks about it. He heads downstairs, nodding in acknowledgement to the people he passes, and out into the street. It takes him a moment to get his bearings – normally he steps out of this building and straight into a car – before he spots the coffee shop and crosses the road.

 

The man stands aside, pressing himself into the wall to allow Arthur to pass. He looks at his feet, refusing to meet Arthur’s eyes even when he shows no sign of going into the shop. He’s not as soaked as Arthur expected, though he does look cold, his thin jacket zipped up to his chin where a tatty red scarf pokes out, his arms folded tight across his chest, hugging his bag of magazines. His jeans have almost gone through at the knees. Arthur suddenly feels very conscious that his handmade Italian shoes probably cost more than this guy will see in a lifetime.

He clears his throat. “Miserable weather.”

The man’s eyes flicker towards him, startled, before he turns away slightly. Arthur begins to think he isn’t going to answer, until he hears a whispered, “Yes.”

“Got many more to sell today?”

The man glances at him again. Arthur guesses he’s Arthur’s own age, probably mid twenties, but his eyes look ancient, he could be eighty or more with eyes that knowing. And they’re the most peculiar shade of blue; Arthur hasn’t seen eyes that colour for years, not since...

“Another dozen.” He’s smiling, just a little. “One fifty. Bargain.”

“One fifty?” He pulls his wallet out, extracts a twenty. “Here, I’ll take the rest.”

The man seems remarkably reluctant to hand over the magazines. “I shouldn’t let you, you know.”

“It’s nothing. Let me, please.” Arthur isn’t used to asking twice, and the small politeness sits uneasily in his mouth. It works though, the man hands over the magazines with another of those odd smiles, and pockets the twenty, jingling the coins in his pocket.

“Keep the change,” says Arthur, hurriedly, and adds, “Look, is there somewhere you can go to keep dry?”

The man continues to find Arthur amusing. It’d be disconcerting if it wasn’t so comfortingly familiar.

“Nowhere I’d choose to be, thanks. It’s okay; you don’t have to worry about me.” It’s the most the man has said at one go, and Arthur picks up a trace of an accent, an odd emphasis on the words ‘you’ and ‘me’.

“Arthur.” He holds out his hand, and the man hesitates a moment before he shakes it. 

“M... Martin. Very pleased to meet you.”

“Martin. Have we met before?”

“I’m here every day.” It’s not an answer, but the man – Martin – beams at him, almost hopefully.

“That’s not what I meant. I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

Martin shakes his head, and even that looks familiar. “No, I’m pretty sure you’ve never met me in your life. You’d remember me, and you don’t. Do you?”

He sounds so wistful, and for a moment Arthur wants desperately to remember him, to place him.

“I suppose not,” he has to concede, finally, and Martin looks away, the grin fading. That does something painful to Arthur’s insides. “Here, let me get you a coffee.”

“The rain’s stopping,” Martin replies. “I should be off.”

“But you’ll be back tomorrow? You’re here every day?”

“I’ll... not tomorrow, no. You won’t see me for a while, now.”

“Oh.” He has no idea why that’s so disappointing. “Maybe next time, then?”

Martin smiles again, but it’s only a faint echo of the grin from before. “Yeah. Maybe next time around.”

He steps out into the street, and takes a few steps before turning back. 

“It was good to see you, Arthur.”

“I’ll look out for you, Martin.”

Martin isn’t smiling at all anymore. “No,” he says. “No, you won’t.”

Arthur is going to ask him why, when he notices how the light catches Martin’s eyes, making them almost gold, and that’s the most familiar thing of all. He’s about to comment on it when...

 

The rain stops. He crosses the street and returns to his office, dumping the soggy magazines in the bin on the way. He closes his office door and looks out of the window, down onto the street.

It’s the strangest thing, but he can’t help feeling that something’s missing.


End file.
